Monday, October 27, 2008

So on Friday night, as always, the two best costumes at the masque were awarded with never before seen event masks, made especially for the king and queen of the masquerade. In this case, the Goblin King and Queen

In the case of the Goblin King, I wanted something inspired by the mask that Jareth wore in Labyrinth. I did know I didn't want to deal with the challenge of a handled mask (aaaaaaagh animations!), but I knew I wanted horns and a skeletal hand incorporated in it. A bunch of joints and a delicately made human hand later, I was starting to play with it. I brought up one of my mask bases and started playing with carving out shapes in the forehead and eye area, with a space for the horns, and then brought it all together in world. It was a lot of fun moving the hand around and seeing how I wanted it, when I found that the thumb moved so well into the eyebrow groove I knew I'd found how I wanted it.

After that, I knew immediately how I wanted the queen, looking like she had her head in her hands but also looking out almost from a cage of bones. This one, if I was ever to make a handled mask work, would be the first to be converted.

Despite the names of King and Queen, I tried to make sure that both would fit on either gender, unlike my other event masks. So if you're a guy and you don't mind wearing something with "queen" in the name (you'd sleep on a queen sized bed right?), you're welcome to wear it!

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Last night I was delighted to see the creatures of the forest called from their lairs to dance about and frolic to the pipes and beats of their native music. The costumes, as always, were incredible and only helped immerse us in the feeling of an unseelie gathering.

As always though, a Goblin King and Queen had to be chosen from the crowd, for who would wear the royal masks? A vote was held amongst those gathered there, and two of most regal countenance were chosen: Mourna Biziou and Norathiel Silvera. They were given the masks of their station, and gifted with some "campaign funds".

The two masks will be released tomorrow :)

Oh, yes, and due to popular demand, the playlist that I used for the ball has been posted here, for your perusing and shopping pleasure!

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Alright, so the thing that started it all to make me remake all those textures were the aforementioned antlers. Aaaah beautiful antlers that I delighted in taunting you with. But, I also realized that while small horns are cute and lovely, sometimes it's a lot of fun to wear big demonic or primal ones.

To start with, a cute pair of horns I was going to make one of the 100L expression ones, but I actually forgot to take a picture of it and so I lost that perfect camera angle. I also realized these were harder to do and more complex... so they're a whole 20L more, oh noes!

Cernwn is the Welsh name for "Cernunnos", who is a Celtic god often associated with horned animals, and ram horns. But he took on his own life in Wiccan and neo-pagan mythology, becoming more than just a ram headed snake and became the "Lord of the Wild Things", which is why I devoted another pair of horns to him.

Mmmm feel the manliness! He's commonly referred to as just "The Lord" in neo-pagan rituals, and is normally invoked to represent the forces of masculinity.

"Ba'al" is actually just a Hebrew word for master, or lord, so there are many Hebrew gods who ended up falling into the name, including some humans who were in positions of power. Most commonly though, Baal applies to a cultist image of a false god. He isn't depicted particularly with horns... but looking at them the name came to me. Some fun trivia, the term "Beelzebub" is actually a pun, based off of "Baal Zebul", which means "Lord Prince" and was an honored and divine title. "Baal Zebub" means "Lord of the Flies" which was a term that was coined to mock the followers of Baal Zebul and later evolved into a term for the devil.

Baphomet was actually a badly garbled name for Muhammad.. that was some crazy telephone game up from the Crusades, huh? He isn't normally depicted with these types of horns, due to a very famous drawing by Levi, but I was having enough trouble thinking of horned gods as it was :P But, I had to make a special set of horns especially for Herne.

Herne the Hunter was a ghost of English folklore, who's roughly based on Cernunnos but is based off of a story of King Richard II of England. The story goes that on a hunting trip, Herne accompanied the king where he cornered a white stag, but the stag attacked the king, and Herne sacrificed himself to save him. According to legend, he was brought back to life by a wizard who made Herne wear the antlers of the stag as a part of the ritual. In exchange, he lost his ability to hunt, and he was hung by the King's other hunstmen for keeping the loot to himself.

Yeeeaah... well... avoid huntsmen and kings and you should be ok wearing these, I hope. Let me know if you end up in any oak trees.

These horns aren't actually what I'd call antlers, only antler inspired...those are still to come ;)

Like the soda that you drink and leaves an ache in your tummy, I had an enormous burp of creations I had to release before my cramp would go. I have had a few sets of antlers done since April, and a lot of people have been feeling taunted and teased by them. However, I refused to release them until I was happy with them, because that's what I do! The textures were absolutely unsatisfactory, and no matter what I did I couldn't seem to get them to the point where I wanted them.

Beware, there are four posts in this epic release, so settle in, get a drink and munch on some popcorn or something.

Well, I finally broke through that about a week ago. Since then, I've been working non-stop, making and upgrading horns and horny accessories. So to start off and show off the new textures a bit, and since this is a monstrous release (hehe), part one of this batch is going to be the remade horns I released over a year ago. These are all horns you've seen before, but I'm posting them because I just love the pictures. Each name is a verb, which can conveniently be expressed through a facial expression.

(Grrrrrrr!)

(Tehehe)

(What's that over there?!)

(Hrumph)(Ooo gonna nom some skittles)(You ate my skittles!? GRRRRRR!)

Obviously I had a ridiculous amount of fun playing with how I could use and combine the Linden default facial emotions to get fun effects. I also had a lot of fun seeing all those simple, cute, and adorable horns again. I realized I should make a few more and make it a nice block of nine. Which meant I could take more pictures! Hehehe >:D

(Nrmph!)

(Nyaarrr!)
Unlike the old horns, these all change texture to a selection of twelve different ones. Gold, silver and copper are all included as well as black, white, gray, bone, bleached bone, polished bone, light tipped, white tipped and dark tipped. This has made my job much easier, as well as serving as a fatpack, which is why the prices for the horns has gone up to 100L per from 45L. I think you'll agree that that's a fine compromise :)

I took all of these pictures with Selos' Heart skin, even though I ended up not showing off her scalp tattoo at least you still get to enjoy the makeup!

I've also started using an updated version of Miriel's vendors, which passes you a folder rather than a box for your object folder. What this means is I won't need to use boxes, which saves you having to unpack your things and saves me a lot of time on more complex releases.

Hahaha, I can't stop doing it, I always am such a tease with my glorious antlers. But I might as well finally scratch your itch and reveal my cards.

Most of the names of these are subgenuses of Cervidae, which is the sort of "deer" category.

A Sika is an east Asian deer, whose antlers were commonly used for medicinal purposes in Japan and China. They are very hard to hunt, as they are extremely clever and tenacious, and a single rifle shot will very rarely take them down. To my knowledge, they tend to have smaller antlers than other deer, but this is based on me looking at pictures :)~

Cervinae is the genus of "Old world deer" or "true deer". These are extremely classic, iconic deer antlers. They'd be found on any red deer or white tailed deer... except females obviously :P Not in my reality of course, girls can totally wear antlers! After all, where else could you have such a large, glorious and attention grabbing rack?Seriously, who could keep their eyes off of a rack like that? Excuse me, my eyes are DOWN HERE.

Anyway, a "heorot" is the old English root for "hart", which is a stag. A heorot more specifically is a red deer male who has reached five years or older. The older a stag gets, the more glorious his antlers can grow, because they don't always fall off during the mating seasons.

I don't have much to say about this one, except to just say... watch out for Sarah Palin.

This is my last post of my Magnificent (and epic) Horn Post, but I'm well aware that your eyes are tired. However, please retain some enthusiasm, because believe it or not I've saved the best for last.

Now, how could I give you glorious antlers without something to wear with them?

The Deer mask is quite similar to my horse mask, in that the ears are included and there are different fur colors, based on common colors of deer. Bay, sorrel, chestnut, black, silver and white. NO I did not include a pink deer... I couldn't bring myself to do that you crazy people. I know you guys saw this one coming... but you didn't see THIS!! *throws something and makes a brilliant flash, and a bunch of smoke appears and reveeaals...*

Roaaaaaar. *snort*. Does this raise any red flags? Do you feel yourself overcome by labyrinthitis? These puns are all an ox-ident. Do you feel a need to axe me to stop bull-ying you? I'm feeling tauran about stopping. But ok I'm done XD

This beautiful minotaur head looks best on a big muscly strapping young lad, but I found I could really make it work on a lady too. The nose ring can change metal or disappear if you don't want to be domesticated, and the chest and head change texture like the deer mask. There are some issues with the chest piece and head piece not going well together if your AO makes you do more extreme head movements. Tilts to the side and some chest movements back with your head forward can show the seam, but in most cases you'll be good.

If you're wondering, the outfit is from The Body Politik's orc avatar, paired with Riann Maltese's faun legs

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Yesterday was my and my dear friend Kriket's second rezday. We share our rezday and I see her quite like a SLister (tehe). I threw a party on the Indigo Rose, and shared some of the new music I have while I DJ'ed! Kriket and I asked everyone to dress up in purple or cyan, 'cause those are our respective favorite colors, and we danced away while sorting our inventories and making jokes about ham.

It's almost hard to believe I've been in SL for two years. Everyone says that, but it's true. Sometimes it feels like it's only been two years, and sometimes it feels like whoa two years O.o. While dancing, I pulled out some of the first things I ever made or bought... including the Mask That Started It All! Aquired October 27th, 2006, soon followed by my first ever mask that I made, marked November 3rd, 2006. Man... soon it'll be two years from my first mask! Wow, aren't I an oldbie! :)~

Anyway... I just am so very grateful I'm getting a chance to do what I love, full time. Being self employed on SL has its ups and downs, its problems and its benefits, and of course its hair yanking moments... but I'm very happy to be given the chance to be what I've wanted ever since I was a little girl. An artist.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Yaaaaaaay! It's finally here, the second annual Jewelry Exposition hosted by my very good friend, Miriel Enfield. She's been through an awful lot of headaches to arrange as lag free and pleasant expo experience as possible, and so far, from what I've seen, wildly succeeded. So I just want to put a thank you to her, right at the top, for hosting it and organizing it again this year. Your hand is very evident as I move about the sim and things are taking only seconds to rez.

Originally, the expo folks had taken a vote on whether to do an Arabian Nights theme or a water theme, and water won. Apparently, not in my reality.

Remember this?

For ages I've had "remake sculpted, good veils without alpha flicker" on my to-do list. Especially remaking this Suleika veil, which, until I retired it, was my favorite and best selling veil. As lovely as it was, it just wasn't good enough to withstand my vicious scrutiny.

So the veil is back, and it brought matching accessories! A necklace, earrings, and arm cuffs can now go with the delicate tracery of chains. I end up having to keep answering "yes, they're prims!". The size may seem unreal, because I used a very diminutive chain link made by Miriel (yes, that Miriel, is my love for her obvious? I'm unashamed) which allows me to go even smaller than Aminom's lovely chains.

If you're noticing up top where it says that it's no transfer, don't worry, you still will have your options to get transfer/copy with the individual pieces, which are available underneath the main board. That picture up there is for the fatpack, and so like all of my fatpacks it's only mod/copiable. The different pieces you can get are the necklace and earrings (together), the veil, the headpiece or a pair of the arm cuffs.

It's scripted to change to six different metal textures, as well as twelve different stone and scarf colors. The scarf was a real struggle with me, I've never been comfortable with textures and I was scraping texture resources and stock photos looking for something I could use. In my venting my frustration, my lovely fiance offered to hand paint a texture for me. He had made banners for some of his friends and so he just modified it beautifully for me, and then I took care of the colors. So yay Siyu's man!

Anyway, Suleika wasn't the only thing to come from my head being stuck in a middle eastern fantasy. The first piece I did was actually just playing with sculpted pieces I had created in hopes of making headdresses. The results were surprising, and beautiful.

This sort of thing makes me happy. Danglies, tiny prims, little frilly bits, shiny things, all coming together to accent the beauty of your virtual expression of self. So this is why I made a few more, 'cause I can't help myself.

Now, already and just from wearing this around my circle of friends, I've had suggestions, requests, pleads and desperate supplications for me to make matching silks for these. I have to speak plainly that the likelihood of that happening right now is very low. I have quite a bit to do before Halloween and then I'll be simscaping Dreams Anubis's place, and then figuring out what I'm doing for the holiday season. So maybe if you're lucky good girls and boys, you'll have silks under the tree :)

Well, even if you're not necessarily going to be good, you'll still get a present at my stall. I've set out a remake of a design I first made three months after my rezday, which even then I didn't feel was good enough to put out in my humble little establishment. It's had a long hard road to freebiedom my friends, but finally it can be worn and enjoyed in its newfound sculpted glory.

(The pendant, I just took this with the veil as a nice excuse to be pretty). It's texture change like the other pieces, and can sort of serve as a demo for the stones and metals :)

Oh, yes, and about that. I've changed the textures for the metals, so there are new colors. The copper and gold aren't quite the same as my other jewelry and items, but obviously they're pretty close. I added a new color, rose gold, which looks beautiful with the red, and absolutely overflowing in estrogen with the pink scarf.

These items are only available at the Jewelry Exposition until the end of this week, when they'll be set out on the store wall :)

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Phew...

Last night I stayed up until sun rays were pouring into the room, working on jewelry for the Expo. That's what I get for procrastinating! But I've always performed well when there's a strict deadline on me... just normally I let it go flying by. But when I actually do it the results are always good! This stuff is no exception.

I'll be doing a release post on Sunday, but I'll tease you and let you know the pieces are a middle-eastern theme. Most of it is definitely not your typical jewelry and I think I'm really going to stand out at the expo... if I can finish my stall!

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Second Life is an online community set in a 3D, game-like environment. It allows everyone to create content, from clothing to buildings, whatever you can imagine. It's a versatile medium for artists, and a place to meet people and form communities. There are any number of places to explore, games to play, and things to be.